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Speaking on Broker Daily’s Business Accelerator podcast, broker coach and founder of Broker Essentials, Jason Back, said the industry had shifted from experimenting with technology to putting increasingly sophisticated tools into practice.
He said, however, that launching new technology or pursuing growth without ensuring consistency and quality of data could undermine future progress.
Cleaning your dirty data
At the centre of a brokerage’s technology stack is often its customer relationship management (CRM) system, but Back said the quality of information being stored within these platforms can vary significantly.
As the broking industry has moved forward, tech and attention to detail have put a greater emphasis on the value of maintaining strong and coherent data, but Back said that many brokerages may have gaps in that data.
“The most important thing about a CRM is, what’s its purpose? It’s data. The problem is the data in a lot of CRMs is really dirty,” Back said.
“So good, clean client data is really important. I think that brokers really need to go and have a review of what that looks like, whether that’s around how up to date the information is, whether it’s around the right information or where there are gaps.”
Back said that an audit would be highly useful for many brokerages, starting by reviewing their database for missing information, including emails, dates of birth, occupations, and other client details.
In doing this, Back said brokers could lift the lid on old leads that could still be sitting in the system.
“This is as simple as even downloading a CSV of your whole database and then actually just running your eye over what’s missing,” he said.
“Don’t forget, this isn’t just about existing clients. These are about potential leads that you’ve had in your business before.”
While acknowledging that a data audit or cleanse could be a manual process, Back said improving the quality of client information could create longer-term value for both the brokerage and its clients.
“The value of a brokerage is not just its tangibles, it’s also the intangibles, and intangibles like the quality of the data and how up to date it is,” Back said.
“That’s a huge part of the value of the asset that you might one day sell.”
Sitting on untapped tech
Alongside data quality, Back questioned whether brokers were fully using the technology already available to them.
While acknowledging there is no “perfect CRM”, he said many brokers may only be tapping into a fraction of their existing system’s capabilities.
“Are you fully utilising your CRM? And I can tell you the answer to most brokers is 100 per cent no,” Back said.
“A lot of brokers are using 20-40 per cent of its power.”
Rather than immediately searching for another system, Back encouraged brokers to better understand the functionality available through their existing CRM.
“Talk to your aggregators, watch all their videos, their how-tos, get on and really dig in because your CRMs are actually, they’re pretty good,” he said.
“So make sure you understand its power and what it can do.”
Back said CRMs had originally been built to collect basic information and help brokers submit loans, but the needs of the industry had since expanded.
“We’ve become a bigger industry than just that,” he said.
“Getting good information into a CRM is one thing. Being able to get good information back out of a CRM and then use it is another thing.”
Adopting new tech
That being said, Back said that there are now a range of useful tech solutions on the market, many of which impressed brokers at this year’s Broker Innovation Summit.
With ever-more sophisticated APIs and integration software, brokers now have unprecedented ability to customise their tech stacks.
Back said the best way for brokers to pick the tech solutions to adopt is to first identify the problems they are trying to solve.
“Look at what you’re trying to solve. Rather than see the shiny bubble syndrome that we all get stuck in, spend time really understanding what that bottleneck is, how it’s created and where it comes from,” Back said.
“Is it a process issue? Is it a behavioural issue? Is it a customer thing? Is it even worth solving this problem?”
Once the problem has been identified, Back said brokers should establish how the success of a new technology would be measured, whether through faster turnaround times, improved customer experience, higher conversion rates, or reduced administration.
From there, he encouraged brokers to pilot technology on a smaller scale before expanding it across the business.
“One process, one staff member, one niche, one friction point,” Back said.
“Start small, get those small wins in place because you actually created something that works and that you can see the value.
“Or, like many say, fail fast and fail often. If it doesn’t work, then we can move on. But don’t try and implement a whole new thing into your business without actually doing some testing.”
Back said the final step was ensuring a new system was adopted by the wider business rather than remaining knowledge held by the principal.
“Technology without adoption is effectively just wasting money,” he said.
“It can’t just be knowledge that’s held by the principal. If you’ve got a team, then this needs to be documented, it needs to be trained, it needs to be ingrained as a habit so that you’re not just then defaulting back to old habits.”
[Related: MFAA urges brokers to bolster cyber defences]
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